Doctor Who and Jesus Christ
by Chrazedgenius
Summary: It is clear from some of the Doctor's off-hand comments, and from the fact that Jesus doesn't return before the end of the universe in 100 trillion A.D, that in the Doctor's universe, Christianity is false. This story comes from the question, "Then who was Jesus in that universe, and how would a Christian companion who thought similarly to me react to learning the truth?"
1. A Chance Meeting

Doctor Who and Jesus Christ:

The Episode That Must Have Occurred, but Will Never Be Aired

_It is clear from some of the Doctor's off-hand comments, and from the fact that Jesus doesn't return before the end of the universe in 100 trillion A.D, that in the Doctor's universe, Christianity is false. This story comes from the question, "Then who was Jesus in that universe, and how would a Christian companion who thought similarly to me react to learning the truth?"_

_Technically, the story is set in the David Tennant era, just before the Planet of the Dead episode (when the Doctor remarks to Christina, "I remember the original [Easter]. Between you and me, what really happened was—" and then gets interrupted). However, for reasons unknown to the protagonist, and thus to the reader, the Doctor is jumping around in his own time stream during this story, channeling Matt Smith at times. (Okay, I just really wanted to give him a bowtie and make him say "Geronimo")._

_Call it a self-insert fanfic if you will. My goal was not any sort of wish fulfillment, but rather to challenge myself to figure out what I would do if my Christian worldview collapsed around me. I present to you _Doctor Who and Jesus Christ_._

_. . ._

**Part 1: A Chance Meeting**

"All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was or ever will be. Where do you want to go?"

Impossible though it was, I stood in the TARDIS, marveling at the Doctor, whose face overflowed with delight. I tried to collect my scattered and confused thoughts, thinking back through the events that had brought me to this place.

Just an hour or so earlier, I had been staring down the barrel of a gun. The gun had belonged to a rogue AI, one of many who had swarmed out of the desert into a rest stop just off a freeway in central California. I'd been driving south on my way to my university near L.A, when I'd stopped for lunch. And the AIs had apparently been lying buried in the desert, when some poor soul stumbled across them and accidentally reactivated them. The AIs turned out to be alien in origin, but when and why they had been left in the desert was anyone's guess. In any case, portions of their programming had degraded, and they identified their would-be rescuer and his whole species as enemies to be destroyed.

As luck would have it, though, the portions of their programming that understood language and logic, and prioritized those above violence, were still intact. They would not kill while someone was speaking to them. Therefore, after I had sufficiently mastered my initial fear of the AI who stormed into the building and trained his gun on me, I met with uncanny success when I attempted to defend myself with the one weapon I possessed: my reason.

"Wait, don't shoot me! Let's just talk for a minute. Why do you want to kill us?"

"YOU ARE CLASSIFIED 'ENEMY,'" the dull grey android answered in a scratchy mechanical voice.

"But why? We can't be a danger to you."

"YOUR SPECIES IS A DANGER."

"In what way? We can't fight you! Tell us, maybe we can fix it."

"YOU ARE CLASSIFIED 'ENEMY.'"

"But you already said that. Just think for a minute! Just think! You say I'm an enemy and a danger, but can you tell me why? If there's no good reason, you must realize that you shouldn't be doing this!"

The robot didn't speak or move for a moment. But then it lowered its gun.

"CANNOT IDENTIFY A GOOD REASON. UNIT FUNCTIONING MUST BE COMPROMISED. UNIT WILL SHUT DOWN FOR MAINTANINCE."

And then, the robot's body went slack, its shiny head drooping and its metal arms falling to its side.

I just stood there for a moment, stunned to see my words work so powerfully. And then I wished to God that my questioning could have such a dramatic effect on other human beings. And after that, I realized to my horror that the other people in the building were not having as much luck as I had. A few, who must not have tried to converse with their attackers at all, lay dead and bleeding on the floor. But the majority were, like I had been seconds before, staring down the barrel of a gun as the AIs waited out their victims' use of language, which consisted mainly of cries along the lines of, "Please, don't shoot!"

I yelled out to the crowd of about 16 people, "REASON WITH THEM! ASK THEM WHY THEY'RE DOING THIS! KEEP ASKING!" and then I spun on the robot nearest to me and raised my voice in hopes others would hear.

"WHY ARE YOU SHOOTING US?"

The AI didn't turn his head from the short Hispanic man on whom he'd trained his gun, but he answered, though not loudly enough for more than those nearest me to hear over the other noises. "YOU ARE CLASSIFIED 'ENEMY'"

"BUT WHY ARE WE CLASSIFIED ENEMY?"

"YOUR SPECIES IS A DANGER."

"HOW ARE WE A DANGER? THINK! AND IF YOU CAN'T COME UP WITH A GOOD REASON, THEN YOU SHOULD SHUT DOWN FOR MAINTANENCE."

The AI didn't move. Presumably it was searching its systems, trying to find any sort of reason to justify its actions. I could tell it had come up short when this robot also went slack, clearly powered off.

"Do that to the others!" I commanded the man I'd just saved. And then I spun around again and went for the next nearest robot.

I heard a couple shots, as a few people who apparently hadn't managed to hear what I'd been shouting over their own personal crises stopped protesting and resorted to whimpering and waiting for the inevitable, which made it come.

At the sounds, I closed my eyes a moment and prayed, "Dear Lord, please help us." As I opened my eyes, I mentally kicked myself. "Stupid. That should have been your first reaction, back when you first saw the things!"

But then I pushed aside my malcontent with my attitude towards prayer in a crisis, and started arguing with the next robot. Try though I did over the next few minutes, I couldn't get the attention of more than one AI at a time, and a couple more people died before the crowd finally got wind of what I was doing and began imitating me. Then it didn't take long before the robots were all safely inanimate.

The crowd, naturally, was still hysterical, crying out in fear and grief at what had happened. Some were pulling out cell phones, probably calling 911 or their loved ones. As for me, now that the danger had passed, curiosity was the most overpowering emotion. Hoping to learn where these things had come from, and feeling rather uncomfortable with the idea of sticking around to try to comfort a bunch of upset strangers, I ran out the door of the rest stop, leaving the three fast-food restaurants that shared the building for the gas station outside. I got a good look at a couple more corpses from people killed outside their refueling cars, and felt a little sick at the sight. I wasn't sure if that confirmed my belief that the many violent video games I had played hadn't and couldn't desensitize me to real violence, or if I would be feeling a lot more sick were it not for the games, which I felt certain would make me correspondingly less useful in this crisis. And then I realized I was trying to distract myself from the death by returning to safer, more familiar, but less relevant, thoughts. So I pushed all that aside, and noticed a peculiar man in a suit and bowtie dart up to a corpse, point a handheld glowing thing at it, pause, and then run towards the rest stop. Towards me.

"Hello, I'm the Doctor," he said to me in a strong British accent as he craned his neck to look into the building past me. "Listen, I need your…" His eyes lit on one of the disabled AIs, and then widened in surprise. "Wha… what happened to the androids?"

I tried to figure out how to word my answer, but nothing sounded perfectly right, so I just said, "I convinced them they shouldn't kill us."

The Doctor seemed impressed at that. He pressed me for details, which I related. Then he told me he had been planning on asking me for my cell phone so he could write a virus capable of restoring the robots' lost programming, but with the robots all shut down, that was no longer necessary. I asked him a bunch of questions about the AIs, and he seemed pleased enough to answer what he could. He didn't know where they had originally come from, though, save for a cryptic remark that they were "possibly based on old cyberman technology." In the end, I followed him as he walked back to the opposite side of the gas station. I asked him what would be done with the disabled robots, and he said, though not very straightforwardly, that the United Nations usually saw to cleanup – which surprised me, since I'd almost never heard of the United Nations doing anything significant. But he interrupted my follow-up question by saying, "Ah, there she is!" and he pointed at something I hadn't noticed before then: a blue box set next to one of the gasoline dispensers, looking like the sort of old-timey phone box Superman might change in, except it had the word POLICE written across the top.

"What is that?" I asked.

"I'll show you," he answered, smiling.

He pushed open the door and gestured for me to enter the box. I did so, a little confused at why he wanted me to enter such a small space. The confusion evaporated once I entered, though, as I realized and exclaimed, "It's bigger on the inside!" Then the confusion returned with greater force, and I asked the Doctor, "How can it be bigger on the inside?"

"It's dimensionally transcendental," he answered. Seeing me opening my mouth to ask for more than that baffling response, he cut me off. "Never mind that now," he said. "It's hardly the most interesting thing about the TARDIS."

"TARDIS?" I repeated.

"Time and Relative Dimension in Space," the Doctor said, looking like he was relishing every word. "It's a time machine!"

"What? A time machine?"

"Yes, and a spaceship – so where would you like to go? Because you can come on a trip with me if you like. Just one trip, mind you. Seems like a fair reward for your actions back there. It's not often someone renders me unnecessary, you know. Not often at all."

I was still working on wrapping my head around all this. "Okay, so you're not a real doctor at all. You're a time traveler! That explains a lot. And you'd offer me a trip in your time machine? And you'd bring me safely back to this time?"

"Yes," said the Doctor, grinning, with fire in his eyes. "All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was or ever will be. Where do you want to go?"

And that's how I'd gotten to the position I was in now, when I had to make what was probably the most important decision of my life.

I thought hard about it. I thought about seeing what earth will be like in a couple hundred, or perhaps a couple thousand, years in the future. I thought about seeing what the earth was really like in the past, before recorded history. I thought about seeing the Milky Way galaxy from an outsider's perspective. But then I thought back to those corpses in and near the rest stop, and I realized what I wanted to see. It was so obvious that I was annoyed at myself for imagining anything else.

"I want to see the crucifixion of Jesus."

The Doctor's eyes widened just a tad, and then he peered at me appraisingly. "Are you sure? Absolutely positive? Because what you see may not be what you wish to see."

"Have you been, then?"

"No, just been to his birth. I do love a good Christmas." He leaned a bit towards me conspiringly, and whispered, "Between you and me, I got the last room in the inn."

My eyes widened in surprise. "What, really?"

The Doctor smiled and nodded. "Couldn't miss the event you lot use to judge time for millions of years, now could I? What kind of time traveler would that make me?"

"I suppose so, yeah. What was it like?"

"Oh, it was gorgeous. The bright light shining in the sky, the shepherds bowing to an infant who lay crying in a manger while his young parents looked on. No wise men, mind you. And I'd so been looking forward to seeing the wise men. But they came a couple years later, apparently."

"Wow. That's amazing."

"Yes. Now…" I saw some of the fire go out of the Doctor's eyes as he turned to observe me. "Now, have you made your decision?"

I swallowed. "Yes. I still want to see the crucifixion. I'm sure."

The Doctor looked at me intently. "Okay," he said to me. "I can do that. Okay." The repeat sounded like it was more directed at himself than at me. "Well then, my friend," he said, turning back to the TARDIS's strange controls, "one trip to the very first century, coming right up." And then he flipped a switch, and a strange scratchy grinding sound reverberated through the air.


	2. The Wonderful Terrible Cross

**Part 2: The Wonderful Terrible Cross**

"Won't someone notice it?" I asked the Doctor, speaking of the big blue box that now rested in one of the side streets in Jerusalem.

"Nah," he responded dismissively. "They have bigger things to care about. Look!"

As we turned out of the side onto a main road, we saw a great crowd in front of us, slowly making its way out of the nearby city gates. I knew Jesus had to be somewhere beyond them.

"Come on," said the Doctor, as he rushed to join the crowd.

I followed quickly, and took in the strange sight before me. The streets were narrow and unpaved and smelled of dust and grime, the soldiers wore Roman uniforms that I'd only ever seen in movies before, and Jews were dressed in shawls and cloaks and similar rough old-timey garments. This really was first century Jerusalem. Incredible.

"What about our clothes?" I asked the Doctor, suddenly feeling very conspicuous. "Surely they'll notice those."

"You'd be surprised," he said. "They don't want to see us right now. They want to see a bloody execution. We'll be fine."

I decided to trust the Doctor on that, and we weaved through the crowd as it flowed out of the city gates towards a distant hillside. The sun shined down strongly, making the air seem to burn and adding the smell of sweat to the smells of dirt and… blood.

The crowd paused, pushing in on one another to get a closer look at what lay in their center. The Doctor and I joined in.

After a moment of jostling, I was able to catch sight of Jesus over the head of a short Jewish man in front of me. He looked terrible. He was on the dusty ground, struggling to get up, as the color red, mixed with the brown of dirt, streamed all across his body. His face was ugly, twisted and grimacing at the pain he was enduring. I couldn't get a good look at his eyes, but from what I could gather from his body movements, he wasn't angry, or scared, just… pained. Next to him, a dark-skinned man was lifting a large wooden cross onto his back. _Simon of Cyrene, being forced to carry Christ's cross, _I realized. Awe swarmed over my face. _That's it. The actual cross people will sing about for millennia to come. And Jesus. Jesus himself. My Lord and Savior. How weak he looks. Wow._

It was one thing to grow up hearing all about the story of Jesus, and even seeing it depicted in various media. It was quite another to actually experience it. I was floored by the significance of it all, and silently thanked God over and over in my head for the terrible beauty of what I, out of so many of his loyal followers, many of whom surely deserved it more than me, was being permitted to see.

And then I was jostled from my position, and lost sight of Jesus.

We walked with the crowd to the hillside, which I knew without having to be told was the hill of Calvary. We caught sight of Jesus again as the crowd formed a couple long lines behind some Romans who brandished their swords and stopped the advance. We watched as Simon put the cross down and melted back into the crowd, and some Romans shoved Jesus to the necessary position on top of the cross. Another Roman brought a hammer and some thick nails. I nearly turned my head away, but I didn't. This was too important. I winced hard, however, when that first blow drove a nail into Jesus' hand. He cried out in pain, as any human would, but many of those in the crowd near me were yelling, raising their fists at the one being tortured before them, jeering at him.

I, on the other hand, felt sick again. The terrible agonies I was witnessing were bad enough, but combine that with the hatred emanating from those around me, and everything about this scene felt deathly wrong. I glanced over at the Doctor beside me to see his reaction, but he just stared at the scene with narrowed eyes and tightly closed lips.

The rest of the crucifixion took place, and I watched for all the scenes I'd read about all my life. Sure enough, there were the guards gambling for his clothing, and the thieves on the crosses next to his reviling him, and the soldiers giving him vinegar to drink when he asked for water. And there were the people taunting him, saying that if he really had been the Son of God, he should have been able to save himself from this. When I tried looking at the scene as a native to this time period, not knowing what would occur three days from now, I had to admit I agreed with them. This scene did not bode well for any declarations of power on Jesus' part. I couldn't get over _weak_ he looked. Despite knowing of the crucifixion, my whole life I'd imagined Jesus as this impossibly great being. Human, sure, but a strong, awe-inspiring human. Somehow my imagination had taken the savagery of the cross and made it a hero's death. There was nothing heroic about this – at least, not in a way that could be sensed. It was, by all accounts, the death of a criminal. A skinny, naked, bloody criminal.

A lump formed in my throat. And then, after I'd been watching the crucifixion for what felt like days, I heard Jesus utter his last words. "It is finished." He then cried out wordlessly, and his head bowed down in death.

I closed my eyes tightly. I'd just witnessed the death of my God. _Thank you, Lord_, I prayed simply.

And when I opened my eyes, I took a step backwards in shock. The bright sunny day had suddenly grown very dim. I looked up, and saw an unnaturally huge cloud that could not have been there a couple seconds before. I then felt the ground jerk violently under my feet, over and over again, and I heard the cracks of breaking rocks before I heard one final deafening crack like lightning, and the ground settled, and I knew from Scripture that the curtain in the temple had just been torn. I heard the Roman commander beside the cross, eyes looking around wide with fear, exclaim, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" And with the miracles I had just witnessed, I believed I would never be able to reasonably disagree with him.

Shortly after that, the Doctor and I returned to the TARDIS in silence, attending to our respective thoughts. I got the sense that this was unusual for the Doctor, so the event must have affected him emotionally as it had me. As for me, I felt like crying, which was similarly unusual. But no tears came. It was a dry sadness, a quiet anger at the viciousness of those who ordered the crucifixion and a silent exultation in the miracles verifying his claims post-mortem. And there was a confusion, too, running in the background as I worked to process what I'd seen, fitting the real Jesus to how I used to think about him. (For instance, he was shorter than I had imagined.)

As we passed the threshold of the TARDIS, the Doctor suddenly regained his voice. He spun towards me and said, "Well, that was quite the experience, wasn't it? Not as much fun as these trips usually are, though, I gotta say. You sure picked a gruesome event to visit. Not as gruesome as Pompeii, mind you, at least in scope, but still, usually people want to see a supernova or something exciting like that. Although, those things at the end were interesting. I wonder how that was managed? A nucleic condensation stream generator should have been able to produce that cloud. If it was modified a bit, it might have been able to do the earthquake too. But what about that final loud crack? That sounded a bit beyond the generator's capabilities. And doesn't the Christian Bible say something about the dead coming back to life and visiting their families here? We should see if that happens."

"What, you don't think they were miracles?" I asked, taken aback by both the content and the amount of the Doctor's words.

"Miracles? No, no. Granted, the universe is huge and ridiculous, but I'm afraid that every time I've experienced what you lot would call a miracle, it's turned out to be alien technology. I'm sure this will too. We should find out who's responsible!"

"And what if the only person responsible really is God?" I asked, a hint of anger creeping into my voice.

He scanned my eyes. "Look, I love your faith, I really do. Makes people want to do good. But I've met hundreds of thinking, feeling alien races who have never received any sort of supernatural salvation, and I've traveled trillions of years into the future to the very end of the universe without this man ever coming back like he promised, and I've never seen a miracle I couldn't explain. And I've seen a lot."

"And I suppose the universe just created itself?" I said, retorting with the first thing that came to mind.

"Actually…" the Doctor said, suppressing a smile.  
I stared at him. "You're not serious?"

"You ever hear of a temporal paradox?"

My mouth gaped open. "Our whole universe is the product of a temporal paradox?! What, did you go back as far as your machine could and throw the big bang out the door?"

"Not me!" the Doctor protested. He hesitated. "A space station, far in the future. Went to the past to dump its fuel, and… overshot. But, but, that's not important now," he said, holding out his hand to forestall future questioning. "What's important is what's happening here. What do you say we skip forward a few days, see what we can find at the tomb come Sunday morning?"

I continued staring at him, feeling like my world was starting to tip and dreading what would happen if I started trusting the Doctor enough – or stopped trusting God enough – to let it topple. But I couldn't deny my interest in his proposal. I'd actually been planning to beg him to do just that before he dropped me back off in my own time. So I said, "Okay. Yeah, let's do that."


	3. Entertaining Angels

**Part 3: Entertaining Angels**

The early morning sunlight warmed us as we waited hidden in some trees by a cave guarded by several Roman soldiers. It felt strange, how the time expressed by the soft golden atmosphere around me, with its smell of dew on the grass and its sound of chirping birdsong, completely clashed with the time expressed by own body, which was starting to feel tired from a long day's worth of events.

We only had to wait for a minute or two before we heard a loud rumbling sound, not unlike the earthquake that had occurred at Christ's death. The guards began to step back from the tomb in alarm, yelling, as before their eyes the boulder that blocked the entrance to the cave began to move, seemingly of its own accord. It rolled off to the side, and when it came to a stop, just outside the newly exposed cave opening, a creature appeared sitting on top of it. The creature radiated light, glowing brilliantly, such that it hurt one's eyes to look at it. But from what I could make out, behind the light dwelt a humanish body dressed in white with a humanish face.

The soldiers bolted, and I had half a mind to join them. This creature felt dangerous, in a way very different from the robots I had faced. The robots has been clearly mechanical, a form of existence lower than organic life. This creature, this… angel, it seemed to come from a form of existence higher than organic life. It was spiritual in nature.

"We should talk to it," the Doctor said, and made to stride out into the open.

"No!" I called out, restraining his arm. "No. Haven't you read the Bible? Mary Magdalene and the other women will be coming soon." _And shouldn't the risen Jesus leave the cave before that happens, too? _I thought to myself._ Doesn't Mary see him as a gardener?_

The Doctor looked annoyed, but he said, "Fine. But I don't like all this hiding and waiting. Where's the fun in it?"

"Hey, you're the time traveler," I said. "You should know not to interfere with historical events."

"Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't ya?" the Doctor's mouth twitched.

But then we heard voices behind us. Sure enough, three women were coming up the road, dressed in traditional Jewish garb and carrying a few jars and pouches. I watched them carefully as they approached the cave. Their eyes went wide as they saw the cave open and unguarded, and then their hands flew to their mouths as they saw the angel on top of the displaced boulder.

"Do not be afraid," the angel spoke in calm, lyrical voice. And the rest of the scene played out just as recorded in the Bible. _Except, _I realized as the women ran back to tell the disciples about what they'd seen, _Jesus never appeared, as a gardener or otherwise. So… did he teleport out, like he teleports into that locked room later on? But then what about the gardener story?_

I didn't have long to contemplate that, however, because the Doctor shouted, "Come on!" and started for the cave.

"Are you sure?" I cried out behind him, fear flooding me even as I ran to catch up with him. "That's an angel!"

"That's not an angel," the Doctor said confidently. "I've seen angels. They do more weeping than glowing." He chuckled then, for some reason.

I was aghast, but I kept my mouth shut, staying a safe distance behind the Doctor to watch the proceedings with a curious mind.

"Ho there," the Doctor called out to the shining being who sat upon the boulder.

The angel looked at us for a moment, and then responded by saying, "Do you search for Jesus who was crucified? You will not find him here, for he is risen, just as he said."

"As a matter of fact, I'm not searching for Jesus who was crucified. I'm actually searching for a nucleic condensation stream generator, or maybe an electric skin-splicer? You wouldn't happen to have one of those on you, would you? Ah, silly me, of course you do. That's ingenious, by the way, using one for a disguise. No one can look at you too closely when your face shines like lightning, can they? Still, nothing a little sonicking can't sort out."

And with that, he raised his handheld glowing thing and pointed it at the angel. It made a buzzing noise, and I started in shock as the light around the angel shimmered and dissolved. Sitting on the boulder was an unnaturally white creature whose skin bunched up in places, giving it the appearance of robes, and it had an elongated head with huge black eyes and a small lipless mouth.

The Doctor smiled. "A Brielian! Oh, this is Christmas." He paused. "Or, Easter, technically, I suppose." He waved his hand dismissively. "Never mind. The point is, what are you doing here? Did the Drakkami finally decide to free your people?"

The angel… that is, the Brielian… well, the creature, at any rate, he scoffed at that, and large eyelids came over his great eyes to narrow them. "You might as well ask if wolves have decided to stop feeding on sheep," he said, in that same soft musical voice. "Who are you?"

"You're supposed to be an angel sent from God himself, and you don't know who I am?" said the Doctor, smiling lightly. "No matter, listen, I'm the Doctor, and I can help you. I'm no admirer of the Drakkami, and I can take you to a planet where they will never be able to find you, and you can be free. But first, you have to tell me, why are you here? What do the Drakkami want? Because it can't just be conquest; trickery isn't their style."

"There are no Drakkami, Doctor," said the creature derisively. "There are only the everlasting Brielians. Now, the disciples of the risen Lord will be here soon. Do you really want to be here when they arrive?" And with that, the creature glowed brightly again for a split-second, and then vanished.

"Argh," grumbled the Doctor. "Teleportation." He turned to me. "He's right, though. No reason to stick around here anymore. And if we get recorded in the good book, we'll be subjected to a level of scrutiny I could certainly do without. Come on!" And then he ran off into the woods to where we had parked the TARDIS.

I followed quickly, head swimming around me. What was that creature? An alien… so, not an angel? Then… oh, I did not want to think about the implications of what I just witnessed. But I knew I had to. The angel had been physical after all, behind his glow, or so it seemed. And it had talked of Drakkami and Brielians, essentially acknowledging the truth of the Doctor's claims! My heart began to sink into my stomach. I had to admit that… things weren't looking good for the faith I had worked to nurture for so many years. But then I realized I still hadn't seen Jesus. I bet he could explain everything. I doubted even an alien could have the technology to raise someone from the dead.

The thought gave me hope, and I ran a little faster, and as we ran the Doctor began to talk aloud. "'Only the Brielians,' he said. How can that be possible? The Brielians have been slaves to Drakkami for millennia! And you'd never see them off the Drakkami homeworld; they're too treasured for their skills as healers and technicians! Well, except for the colony planet Canalie – they get ferried there sometimes. Still, why would they be here? Unless… one group managed to get away on their own! I'm not sure how, but… of course! What could they then do with their freedom?" He looked at me then, as though expecting an answer to his question.

We'd reached the Tardis, and as we stepped in, I answered with the first thing to come to mind, "Uh, I don't know. Read books?"

"But they'd need to be able to buy the books," said the Doctor, getting more and more loud and animated, "and in order to buy things, you need a functioning society. But how could the Brielians organize a functioning society? Despite their extraordinarily lengthy natural lifespans, they're notoriously delicate and brittle – they couldn't survive on most planets for long, and Drakkami spaceships can't support Brielian life for more than the time it takes to travel between Drakkamar and Canalie: about 100 years or so."

"100 years?" I said, surprised at the large number.

"Well, it's space," said the Doctor matter-of-factly. "And, with the exception of short range teleporters like the one we just saw, the Drakkami haven't perfected faster than light travel yet, which is very good news for the rest of the universe. Still, it begs the question, once again: how can they be here? A teleportation gone wrong, perhaps? Taking all the Brielians but leaving the Drakkami, dropping them near Earth? Eh, sounds fanciful. And why, why would they be here? Although, Earth is probably the planet most similar to Drakkamar this side of the Milky Way, and that means," the Doctor was wagging his finger at me now. "That means it is easily the most suitable planet for delicate Brielian life! But how does that connect to what they're doing here?"

"If you're insinuating that they're trying to take over the Earth, this seems like a really poor method of doing it."

"Right. Good point. Well, enough speculation. We need answers. We need to know where the 'angels' will pop up next." With that, he ran to the lower level of the TARDIS control room and began rooting through a chest stashed in a corner. "I know I have one of them in here somewhere."

"A Bible?" I asked, watching him. "I could just tell you. The next time angels pop up is when Jesus ascends into heaven. But there are also lots of times before that when Jesus appears to his disciples. Maybe we could talk to him."

The Doctor turned away from the chest and began running back to the upper floor. "No, that wouldn't do. I doubt he knows anything about what's really going on."

I frowned, as I followed him at a somewhat slower pace. "What? Why wouldn't he?"

"Well, think about it. The man obviously believes very strongly in his claims. It's like my old pal Jack said. Either the man's who he claims to be, but I think recent events have proven otherwise on that count. Or the man's lying about who he is, but who would die like _that_ for what he knew was a lie. Or the man's a lunatic because he honestly believes he's the son of God, and yet, and yet, the man acts nothing like a lunatic!"

"Wait, wait!" I said, stopping my movement and holding up a hand. "You were _pals_ with C. S. Lewis?"

The Doctor turned back to look at me, then gave a small nod. "Lovely chap, Jack. Did great work. Told me he'd based one of his characters off me, I think. Named Ramananadu or something. He took a few creative liberties, mind you."

My mouth hung open for a moment, and then I remembered that we had both just seen Jesus Christ die. I guessed anything was possible after that.

"Anyway, my point is, what if there was another option? What if Jesus honestly believes he is who he says he is, but he's wrong, because he is the one who was lied to? Wouldn't you believe anything an angel of the Lord had to say?"

"I… suppose so," I answered, not really wanting to commit to a claim as heretical as that.

"It seems to me that that's the most logical explanation. Therefore, it's the angels we're going for. Time to watch Jesus ascend into heaven." And then he pulled a switch on the TARDIS.


	4. Heaven is a Place on Earth

**Part 4: Heaven is a Place on Earth**

Once again, we stood on a hillside amongst a crowd. But this time, the crowd was composed of disciples, and everyone was silent to hear Jesus' voice as he shouted out from the top of the hill. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you," he was saying. "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth!"

And then, suddenly, just as he finished saying "earth," his feet left the earth. He levitated, rising higher and higher, his face looking up to the heavens. I tried to judge how fast he was rising, based on airborne things I'd seen before, and concluded that he was traveling faster than a balloon, but slower than a toy rocket. Probably about the speed of a bird taking flight.

The disciples watched, awestruck, until he rose so high that he passed through a small globular cloud. It was the only cloud in that part of the sky, and it continued to float along, carried by the wind. When it floated past the place where Jesus had been ascending, and we should have been able to see a few dots in the sky to mark his location, we saw nothing. I wondered at that. _He must have been going faster than I'd thought._

Everyone was still staring into the sky, with varying levels of surprise and wonder etched on their faces. I, too, was marveling at the sight. _Wow. How could anyone explain this? People don't fly. This is going to be the only time I ever see a person levitate like that, without any technology to aid them. Incredible._ And yet, a little voice, one I didn't want to listen to, was nagging at me, asking me to consider the fact that I knew nothing about what alien technology was capable of.

And then, a voice sprang up from beside me, and called out to the group, "Men of Galilee! Why do you stand looking into heaven?"

Everyone spun, and turned to look at the source of the voice. It was the same creature from the tomb, shining brilliantly, and beside him was another creature of the same sort. I tried peering through the light to get a closer look at the creatures, and while I could easily make out their insanely white skin, bunched up like robes, I couldn't be sure if the seemingly dimmer blotches of light near their heads were their huge black eyes.

They continued speaking, saying, "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

The disciples began nodding and backing away, waiting to see if the strange creatures, whom they probably trusted due to association with their master, but still felt very uncomfortable with, were going to say anything else. When they didn't, the disciples began to move away, taking the road back to Jerusalem. Once they'd gotten a safe distance away, they began to talk amongst themselves animatedly, paying no attention to the fact that two who had been amongst their number remained on the hill.

"Right," said the Doctor, stepping up before the two angels. "Look, you lot, we're not giving up, so I suggest you just tell us what your intentions are here. Why all the theatrics? Just what are you after?"

The angels looked at the two of us, and then one answered, "We desire only to serve, as we always have."

"Seriously?" said the Doctor. "I know that's what the Drakkami have bred you for, but doesn't every living being want some freedom? And if it's not the Drakkami, then who are you serving by being here?"

The light around the angels began to glow brighter. The other angel answered, simply saying, "The humans." And then they both disappeared.

The Doctor gave a little frustrated groan, and then turned to me. "The humans? How are they serving the humans?"

I shrugged. "By giving hope to the oppressed?" I said unfeelingly. I was beginning to feel numb from all that I had experienced. I dreaded what would happen if I got a moment to myself to let my walls down and honestly process it all.

"Maybe," said the Doctor, considering that. "On Drakkomar, they were the oppressed. They could be trying to help others like them, but without war and violence. Oh, that would be interesting. Aliens coming to Earth to _help_ humans for a change of pace! Sounds too good to be true." He turned around, and once again he began running for the TARDIS, and I followed.

"You know, it is a _time_ machine," I called out. "What's your hurry?"

"Hey, the faster we get to the TARDIS, the faster we can get to the Brielian spaceship. From our point of view, anyway."

"Spaceship?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows. "What spaceship?"

"Didn't you see it? The one that picked Jesus up in the sky. The one that they just teleported to. I said that their teleportations were only short-range, didn't I?"

"You mean the cloud?"

"Yes, the cloud. Except it's not a cloud, it's an alien spaceship, disguised as a cloud. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I'd bet you anything that about thirty years ago, it was in Bethlehem disguised as a star."

Roughly five minutes later, the Doctor proudly proclaimed that we'd landed in the spaceship, and we exited the TARDIS together. I stared at the room we found ourselves in. Unlike the TARDIS, and the more popular imagination of a spaceship, this room was not hard, metallic, or dimly lit. Rather, it was like the cloud the ship disguised itself as: the floor felt soft and cushiony, and the walls and ceiling looked to be the same. Wisps of a smoky, cloudy substance covered every surface, stretching gaseous tendrils into the stale air. And everything was brightly lit, though I couldn't identify any particular light source.

"Come on," said the Doctor, and he raced to enter a nearby hallway.

"Ugh, why do you always have to run?" I complained again, my legs smarting from the unusual exertions of the day as I followed.

The Doctor didn't answer, instead turning at the end of the short hallway into another room, similar to the one we had just come from, except this one had two angels at the end of it. They weren't glowing like on earth, but plainly wore the big-eyed small-lipped face I'd seen at the tomb. And they were standing in front of a fire. No… an orb made from a dark substance that moved and rippled and emitted tongues of flames.

"Whoa, is that what I think it is?" said the Doctor, already strutting up to the angels. "Psych-Stim nanites? Where ever did you get so many?

"What?" I asked.

"Mild form of mind control," the Doctor answered, not looking back at me. "Not even control, really, they just nudge a person a bit, and they only work on someone who wants them. But so many! This is enough to insert into everyone on Earth!"

"They can also heal their hosts of most bodily ailments if used correctly," one of the creatures offered.

"Really? That's new. But it certainly explains why'd you have them with you. So what are you planning on doing with them? Not healing everybody, surely?"

"How did you get on board our ship?" the other… Brielian – I finally decided to call them that – said.

"I flew in my own spaceship. Now don't evade the question. Tell me the whole plan!"

The Brielians stared at us, and then one finally said, "Very well."

The Doctor turned back to look at me wearing the widest smile I'd ever seen, his face positively erupting in delight. "That finally worked," he said, trying but probably failing to be quiet enough that only I could hear. "I don't believe it!"

"It seems we cannot be rid of you simply by avoiding you. Perhaps we will meet with more success in convincing you to leave of your own will. Know that if you decide to interfere, you will, regretfully, be destroyed."

"Ooh, ominous," said the Doctor. "Okay, tell us. Why are you here?"

"Sit down," said one of them, gesturing at the floor and proceeding to sit cross-legged himself. That made me realize for the first time that the creatures really did have legs – again, when they stood, it looked like they were wearing robes, their legs fused together. The Doctor and I followed instructions, and sat on the cushioned floor. It was really quite comfortable. The other Brielian joined us, and then began his story.

"A plague struck an isolated city on Canalie that was beyond even our abilities to heal," he said. "It infected only Drakkami, and when it killed them all, we had no masters to serve. We took council, and decided to take the opportunity to seek out different, kinder masters, past the stars. There were dissenting voices, of course, who felt we should contact others on Canalie, but they were made to agree in the end." He actually glanced at his companion as he said that. "We constructed our own space ship by modifying an old colony ship, and went exploring. Without Drakkami oversight, we were able to improve its speed, but even so, I wonder if we would ever have reached one of the legendary alien planets before our time ran out, had we not come across a Tritovorian trading ship."

"Ah, good ol' Tritovores. I hope I get to meet some one day," the Doctor said.

The Brielian ignored the interruption, continuing, "They sold us the nucleic condensation stream generator, and a wormhole generator they promised would take us to an alien planet where the Drakkami would never find us."

"Earth," I said.

"Yes," said the Brielian. "Though the Tritovoresdidn't know that. The destination of a wormhole can be directed to a point, but it is ultimately random. Still, we arrived here, and set about investigating our new home. We didn't want to be seen as enemies. We're not warriors, we'd die if it came to battle, even against such technologies these people have."

"So you concocted a plan to make Earth accept you," said the Doctor.

"Yes. We learned of the prophecies of the Jewish people, so varied, nearly contradictory, more expressions of hope than anything else. But we decided to use them, be the saviors they wanted."

"But for that, you needed a man," said the Doctor.

"Yes," the Brielian repeated a third time. "So we built one, genetically engineering an embryo to be exactly who we wanted it to be. We sent one of our number to artificially inseminate it into a young Jewish girl while she slept unaware, and then appear to her the next day to give her an explanation of her pregnancy she could believe. We did various things to ensure the safety of the baby and certify its place as the prophesied messiah, from appearing to magi to tell them not to go to King Herod, to appearing to a priest and giving his wife, the girl's cousin, an engineered child, too."

"Okay," said the Doctor. "I think we can fill in the blanks from there. You used your technology to do miracles and give credence to Jesus, whom you deceived into doing your will. You knew the prophecies predicted he'd die and rise again, so you made that happen. But you can't bring someone back from the dead, that's impossible. So, you, what, constructed a replica of him?"

The Brielian nodded.

"And you teleported the body out of the tomb. Very clever. And now, Jesus' followers are poised to go out into all the earth, spreading the story of what happened here. So, when you do come back with Jesus, just before your spaceship gives out in a generation or two, the earth will only be too happy to accept you."

"Yes. We will have masters again, as we are meant to have, in the humans. And the humans will be far kinder masters than the Drakkami ever were, thanks to this." And he pointed at the flaming orb.

"Oh, yes, I was just going to ask about that," said the Doctor. "How do you intend to use that?"

"It's the Holy Spirit," I said, almost in a whisper. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment, and worked to shove out the blackness that was increasingly gnawing its way into my heart. _I'm not going to deal with this now, _I thought._ The emotions can come later. _Still, my body felt weak, and I knew the blackness, this dark pool of emotions, would only grow, until I was drowning in it.

I opened my eyes. "The Holy Spirit," I continued, stronger. "You mean to insert the… nanites into the disciples at Pentecost. It'll work, because they're already expecting it and want it. It'll give them the ability to understand and speak multiple languages, to perform works of healing, and it'll guide them where you want them to go, nudge them to do and say what you want them to do and say. It'll make them better people, and they'll love it for that."

"Yes," the Brielian confirmed. "And it'll spread from person to person through physical contact, the laying on of hands, until all will welcome us into their homes, and the reign of King Jesus begins."

"Brilliant, Brielian." said the Doctor appreciatively. "Ha! I've always wanted to say that!"

The other Brielian spoke for the first time since the explanation began. "Now that you know our plans, will you finally let us be?"

I started breathing faster. My walls were crumbling.

The Doctor scratched his face. "Well," he said, drawing out the word, "you don't seem to be doing anything to actually endanger anyone. A very rare occurrence, I've found. You don't even want to take their world from them. You actually want to serve them. Restructuring their political lines to do it, sure, but maybe…"

And then I failed. I couldn't hold it anymore. The dam broke, and I was drowning.

I ran.


	5. A Crisis of Faith

**Part 5: A Crisis of Faith**

"What?" the Doctor called out after me, clueless to my despair.

I sped through the hall and into the other room with the TARDIS, entered the blue box, found an out of the way corner on the lower level, and hunkered down, pulling my knees up to my chin and wrapping my arms around them.

_I've never lost control like that before, _I thought.

_I've never had my whole world crumble around me before, either, _I responded to myself.

_True. Oh, please don't let the Doctor come back in here after me, _I prayed. _I need to be alone._

_And just who am I praying to? _I asked myself.

_I don't know._ The tears were dripping fiercely now. _I don't know._

_Is it still possible to deny it? _I wondered. _Can I make sense of everything I've seen without sacrificing Christianity? Maybe they're lying… or, or God's using the Brielians to do his will!_

_No, I know that's not right. The Holy Spirit, nanites? I'm grasping at straws._

_Yeah… _I admitted._ Ugh!_ I hit the ground of the TARDIS violently_._ _But there has to be some way… some way to salvage my… thought structures. Some way this doesn't all topple._

_And what way would that be? Jesus was my foundation. Remove that, and the structure topples, there's no avoiding it._

I was quiet a moment, save a sniffle or two. Disgustingly, mucus was beginning to drip from my nose. I wiped it with my sleeve, hating with all my heart the state that I was in. _Was he really my foundation, though? It took agreeing to certain claims before I was able to accept him. And even after I accepted him, I kept feeling like I was holding something back, trying to build some thought structures without him, 'just in case.' Like I knew, but didn't want to know._

_That was sin. A lack of faith._

_Was it? Where do these revelations leave the concept of sin? Is there such a thing?_

_Maybe... maybe not. _I acknowledged. _There's still such a thing as failure, though._

_Which only matters if you have goals. What should my goals be, now? What am I living for?_

And then, the door opened, and the Doctor plodded cautiously into the room. I could see him through the grate separating the levels. I groaned in frustration.

"Hullo," he called out, in that annoying British accent. "Are you okay?"

_No, I'm not okay. Of course I'm not okay! _I wanted to scream at him. I considered ignoring him, too, but I knew he'd find me quickly. So instead I answered, "No. Could you leave me alone, please?"

"I… I don't want to make a decision on the Brielians without you," said the Doctor, shifting his feet, clearly uncomfortable with this whole meltdown.

_He'd probably be a little better with it if I weren't another male_, I thought. _Whether it's just stereotypical or based in truth, people expect this from a woman on occasion. But men aren't supposed to do this. Chalk up another one to the list of things I've done wrong, I guess. I suppose I ought to be glad he wants my opinion on what the Brielians are doing. Problem is, I can't bring myself to care._

"What does it matter!" I yelled out. "'God is dead, and we have killed him.'" _Now, who's to say Nietzsche wasn't right all along?_

He scurried down the stairs to reach me, still _running_, infuriatingly. I stared at him defiantly from beneath tear-stained eyes.

He looked at me and said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I… I warned you that what you saw may not be what you wished to see.

"Yes. Yes, you warned me."

"But right now, the world needs you."

I chuckled darkly at that. "No, it doesn't. It never did. That was another delusion: that I have any value."

"What?" The Doctor said, aghast. "You have value!"

"No, I don't. I'm going to die about seventy years from now, if I'm lucky. And when I do, I won't remember anything that I did during life, whether good or evil. Ultimately, nothing will matter to me. As for everyone else, can you really tell me, Doctor, that anyone, billions of years from now, will remember any act in my miniscule little life? I could be the worst villain, or the greatest hero, and ultimately, it will all be forgotten!"

The Doctor was shaking his head. "Nothing is ever really forgotten–"

"Don't give me that!" I interrupted. "Everything is forgotten, completely and utterly. You told me once you'd traveled to the end of the universe. You really believe any memories are going to survive _that_?"

The Doctor didn't answer, so I continued. "Without God, it's like Ecclesiastes says: Everything is meaningless, a chasing after wind. So, just eat, drink, and be merry, for death will come to all of us, regardless of whether we are good or evil. All I have is what temporary happiness I can secure before I lose it all! 'Rational self-interest,' I think Ayn Rand called it. I guess that's what I'm living for now. Because now, why should I do good for others, unless it benefits me in some way?

"Because it's the human thing to do!" the Doctor cried out.

"No, it's the godly thing to do! And I'm not godly. I guess I never really was. I don't know what humans you've spent your time with. Probably the very best of us, who are on their best behavior around you to try to impress you. Have you spent any time with drug-addicted hedonists, or hate-twisted racists, or child molesters? Have you worked to end sex trafficking, or fix governmental corruption, or even really taken a good long look at the people you're trying to save? Have you ever stared into the abyss at the heart of man, and let it stare back into you?"  
The Doctor was silent, and wasn't meeting my eyes.

I quieted down a bit. "Not that I've done a lot of those things, either, I guess. But I know my own heart, and it is wicked. What goodness has been able to grow in me is because of the influence of the Holy Spirit, which, I find out now, isn't anything more than nanites in my brain!" My voice grew loud at the end again.

The Doctor looked at me again, his eyes scanning mine. "I've seen the wickedness of people. More so than you think. But I've also seen the goodness of people. And there's a lot more there than you give credit for."

"It doesn't matter," I said. My tears had dried up, as the hole in my soul had been filled with anger instead of despair. But now I felt the anger ebbing again.

"Of course it does!" said the Doctor. "You can pretend not to care, but I can see through you. You care deeply. Your tears are proof of this. Nihilists don't cry. Some great love in you yet remains. What is it you care so deeply about?  
"I don't know," I said, turning away from the Doctor.

"You do. Think."

I thought. I'd spent my anger, and at this point I was just searching for some truth to cling to. My eyes opened a bit wider at that. _I'm just searching for some truth. Truth. The 'Greatest thing' Augustine used as proof for God. Unfortunately for his proof, God's existence doesn't actually follow from truth's value, but he still demonstrates the greatness of truth._

"Truth," I whispered.

"What's that?" he asked, leaning in a little closer.

"Truth," I said, louder, turning my eyes back to the Doctor. "After everything else has come tumbling down, truth still remains, unscathed. Truth will always remain, even when there isn't anyone around to know it. After the end of the universe, still it will be true that the universe existed, and that I did such and such action on such and such day. Truth and God fought a battle today, and truth, incredibly, came out victorious. It's proven itself greater than even God, killing him. Now it is the thing to be loved, and worshipped."

"Okay," said the Doctor, still scanning my eyes, and apparently satisfied with the resolve he found there. "Okay. Truth it is."

"Which means," I said, my voice growing in strength as my anger and despair drained away, to be replaced by a new love – or the old love, rather, but redirected a bit. "Which means we can't let the Brielians carry out their plan. They would deceive all of us. I've spent my life worshipping a false god. That should never be allowed to happen, to anyone."

"Are you sure? If we stop them, it will rewrite history. The world will change, without Christianity. Many good things will be lost. You might never be born."

"Whatever is in the interests of Truth."

The Doctor paused. I got the sense that he wasn't totally on board with my line of reasoning about this, but he must have agreed with my conclusion for his own reasons, because he nodded and said, "Okay. We'll stop them."


	6. Attacking Alien Angels

**Part 6: Attacking Alien Angels**

We walked together back to the other room, where the Brielians were bent over the shimmering orb, touching it in various places. Getting it ready for deployment, I guessed. When we entered, they straightened and turned to us, and one of them asked, "Now, have you finally made a decision? We have no wish to harm anyone, but we will if you stand in our way."

"You know," said the Doctor, pacing before them with a confident swagger. "A question occurred to me. No matter how strategically you use your followers, not everyone will want to believe in your new religion. Some will refuse the nanites, and therefore they won't work on them. What do you intend to do with those people?"

The other Brielian blinked its huge eyes and said, "We hope all will come to accept us. Our miraculous acts ought to be convincing. But we cannot risk living on a planet with others who might want to kill us. Anyone who refuses our salvation will have to be thrown into the lake of fire."

"You have a lake of fire?" I asked.

"A nucleic stream condensation generator combined with an electric-skin splicer can make a great many things."

_Including Hell, apparently, _I thought with some bitterness.

"Ah, but see now, that won't do," said the Doctor. "I think you underestimate the strength of humanity's love of freedom. They will not all bend their knees to King Jesus, no matter how many miracles you attribute to him. They will not let themselves be controlled, and I will not let you kill them for that."

"It's either them or us, Doctor," said the first Brielian. "I'm sorry to hear that that's your decision. It seems we wasted our time in explaining ourselves to you." He paused. "Goodbye."

Then their skin flared up like a noiseless explosion, and balls of heat and light went streaking for us. We ran, narrowly avoiding the attacks.

"I thought you said they were weak and delicate," I shouted as we darted down the hallway.

"They are!" said the Doctor. "I've never seen an electric skin-splicer do _that_. They're better tinkerers than I gave them credit for. Hang on!" he said, coming to a halt. "Why aren't they following us?"

We turned around. Sure, enough, there were no signs of pursuit.

"They must think they can defeat us without following us," said the Doctor, looking around wildly, "which means…"

And then I felt a tickle on my leg, and when I reacted by trying to snatch it off the floor, I found it felt as heavy as if it were made of solid metal.

"Doctor," I called out. "My leg! I can't move it."

He took a step towards me with one leg, and then I watched him strain against his other leg. "Me neither," he muttered, looking at the ground.

I followed suit. The little cloudlike wisps coming off the floor had grown, and now were wrapping around my legs. It looked like I should have been able to extricate myself from it as easily as from mist, but attempting to move proved otherwise.

And the wisps continued to stretch upward quickly. I felt a pull on my arms, which were laying by my side, and I swiftly raised them above my head. "Doctor," I called out, a note of panic entering my voice. "What are we going to do?"

"Just hold on," he said. With a bit of difficulty from what stray strands had made it up that far, he wrest his glowing handheld thing from his suit pocket, and pointed it at his entrapped legs. It buzzed, and the wisps began to retreat. When he finally pulled his legs free, he ran over to me. By this time the wisps had reached my shoulders, and my neck was getting hard to move. He buzzed his thing at me, and the wisps retreated from me too. When I finally wriggled my legs away, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"If there's one thing you can always rely on the sonic screwdriver to do, it's unlock restraints like these," the Doctor said. "Well, as long as they're not deadbolted. Well, as long as they're not deadbolted or made of wood. Well, as long as they're not deadbolted or made of wood or protected by certain types of hair dryers. Still haven't worked that one out yet. Anyway, the Brielians will think we're taken care of, but we're not. And that gives us an advantage. Come on!" and he made for the door the Brielians were working in.

"Wait, wait!" I said, grabbing his arm. "If you just barge in, won't we lose that advantage, and just get blasted again? Do you have a plan, or are you just gonna talk at them and hope they listen?"

"I have a plan," he said, and I let go of his arm. He paused, and then said quickly, "It's to talk at them and hope they listen. Come on!"

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or yell, but I settled for a shake of my head, and said, "Look, we've barely seen anything in this ship. How about we check some of the other rooms, see if there's something we can use? Maybe find that nucleic thing?"

The Doctor stopped. "That's a good plan, I like that plan. It's my plan now, let's use my plan."

We explored the ship a bit, going through hallways and rooms, the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver to scan behind doors for Brielians so we didn't accidentally run into any. The ship wasn't huge, though, and it didn't take too long before the Doctor announced, "It's here," and sonicked a door open. The room was like every other room in the ship that we'd seen, but against the opposite wall lay a large cylindrical metallic device, mostly smooth, but patterned in strange designs with various knobs and other controls sticking out in places.

"That's it, then?" I asked the Doctor.

"Oh yes. A nucleic stream condensation generator. Good for making clouds, or cloudlike substances like this," he twirled his finger around a wisp extending from a wall, "Also good for boring into the earth, making earthquakes, or, when combined with the energy of an electric skin-splicer, lakes of fire." The Doctor looked at me, smiling conspiratorially. "Let's break it."

He stepped up to the giant cylinder and pointed his glowing thing at it.

"Don't move a muscle."

We froze, then slowly turned our heads back to look at the door. It was open, the darker section of the soft wall that marked the door's presence tucked neatly into the wall above it, and a Brielian standing in its place, one hand crackling brightly with lightning.

"I said, don't move. Our trap didn't stop you, I see. You intend to destroy this device?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, but just listen a second. You said it was either you or them, but it doesn't have to be that way! I have a ship, I can take you–"

"I didn't say that," the Brielian interrupted. "My companion did. Me, I never wanted to come here in the first place."

"Really?" said the Doctor, cocking his head. "Then why did you?"

"Because," the Brielian answered coldly. "When a single scratch can kill you, you tend not to voice minority opinions too loudly."

"Okay," said the Doctor. "So will you consider accepting my offer? I can take your people to a different planet, where they will value your services as equals. You can be free, and without harming or deceiving anyone."

"And what is freedom worth if we're not safe enough to enjoy it? Our blood doesn't clot. Our lungs can handle only certain precise air mixtures. Our skin boils upon contact with many otherwise harmless chemicals. This is the cruel irony of nature, that we have the longest natural lifespans of any species in the universe, never dying of old age, and yet we couldn't survive for more than a few weeks on any planet you bring us to. Unless you would like to take the time to prepare a special biome for us – to which I reply, how is being caged, free? No, we don't belong on any alien world, let alone this one of rocks and nettles. Two of our number have already died, one from encountering an unknown substance, and the other just from stumbling on the uneven ground. And I have no desire to live the rest of my life stuck in the "New Jerusalem" they're planning to build. Not when there are whole planets tailored specifically to our needs back home. I don't care how hard the Drakkami work us, or how demeaningly they treat us – at least they know how to protect their assets."

"All right," said the Doctor. "All right, if that's what you want. I can help you with that. You said there are others who believe as you do?"

"About a third of us."

"And the rest won't dare fight if they find themselves back in Drakkami space, not when it risks their lives without even a chance of getting back to Earth.

"Yes, but we have no means of getting home."

"I can help with that," said the Doctor. "I wish there were a better way to resolve this, but I don't think there is. Do you have anyone on the surface right now?"

"No."

"Then take me to the wormhole generator that brought you here. It's time to send you lot home."

As it turned out, recent models of wormhole generators, here in the first century, came in pocketable sizes. One just needed to plug them into a universal port in one's ship to activate it. And the Brielian who carried the generator in some skin folds that served as a pocket happened to be the one still left in the room with the nanites.

"Have we just been meeting the same two Brielians every time?" I asked as we ran – of course – back to that room. "At the tomb, at the ascension, and here?"

"We were elected to be in charge of all earth communications, after those deaths I told you about," the Brielian explained, somewhat gruffly, though that might have been from his exertions. He wasn't too happy with running to keep up with the Doctor either. "Most of the rest of us haven't been on earth since we appeared in force to impress some shepherds thirty years ago."

"Ah. And why does a director of 'earth communications' have the wormhole technology?"

"Skin folds that can function as pockets are very rare. There weren't a lot of options if we didn't want it lying on the floor."

"What, and you guys don't usually have to carry things on your person?" I asked.

"No," he said simply.

Before I could follow-up on that, the Doctor shushed us. "Here we are." He stood in front of the door, ready to put his hand on the opening mechanism. "Ready? Allonsy!" He pressed his hand to the door, and it silently flew upwards into the wall above it.

"Hullo there. We're back again!" called the Doctor, stepping into the room.

The creature stood up from where it had been crouching over the nanites, as I followed the Doctor in.

The Doctor continued, "And we're not alone!" After me, the other Brielian strode into the room.

"What?" said the first alien, his huge eyes bulging a bit. "Are you helping… traitor!"

"Says the one who abandoned our lords."

"If you would ally with these enemies, then you will share their punishment!" His hand flared up with lightning, crackling all around each finger.

"Wait, wait, wait," said the Doctor. "Let's not be so eager to fight. There are three of us, and only one of you. You couldn't take us all down before you get damaged beyond repair."

The Brielian didn't move. "Perhaps not. But I would be willing to die to ensure a better life for my fellows."

"Better life?" said the Brielian beside me derisively. "I'll take, 'longer life,' thank you. The humans may respect their servants more than the Drakkami, but their planet will never be able to safely host us both."

"When we build New Jerusalem…"

"It's too late for that," interjected the Doctor. "We destroyed your nucleic condensation stream generator. I'm afraid Earth will be forever inhospitable."

The Brielian glowered. "You what? That will set us back years! But… we can still make it work. We have other technologies."

The Doctor took a step towards him. "Give it up. I can take you back to the Drakkami. I'm sorry there isn't a solution that can make everyone happy, but you cannot stay here on Earth."

"The Drakkami took my spouse away from me. Because he was better at working on starships than energy generators, they separated a family. I am _never_ going back to them."

"Then you'll never see your spouse again!"

"I won't either way! He died. In an accident during his new job."

"You know we shouldn't get so attached to our spouses," replied the Brielian beside me. "It's not like we could risk ourselves by mating with them as these aliens do. You were only assigned a spouse for the sake of raising children, and you abandoned that duty too!"

"Wait," I whispered to the Doctor. "Where do they get children from, then?"

"Grow 'em from seeds. In gardens," the Doctor whispered back. "Actually, their species only has one gender."

_Woah._

"No more! The nanites are ready. Earth _will_ accept us!" and then he – or it? No, the alien had already referred to his spouse as a 'he' in place of a gender-neutral pronoun – he turned back to the flaming, rippling, orb.

In that moment, several things went through my head. First, I felt certain he was about to unleash the nanites on Earth. Second, if he succeeded, many people would experience miracles of healing, the ability to speak other languages, and aid in becoming better, kinder, people. Third, if he succeeded, Christianity would spread beyond all containment and many people would come to accept a false religion and live their whole lives ignorant of the truth. I could not let that happen. I _would_ not let that happen.

I leapt at the Brielian, shoving him to the floor. We were both yelling, but over our noises I could hear the buzzing of the orb. I turned to look at it, and saw with a sinking feeling that the orb was unraveling into little strands that were disappearing into the walls and floor. I'd misjudged how quickly I could tackle him, or how long it would take for him to activate the nanites. I'd failed.

I got off of the Brielian, and saw the Doctor looking at me with wide shocked eyes. The Brielian was still screaming. I turned back to him, and the sight made the sinking sensation complete, as my heart fell into the very pit of my stomach. On the hand he was holding out in front of him, the one I had fallen on, skin had broken, and charcoal grey blood was dribbling out.


	7. There is No Paradise

**Part 7: There is No Paradise**

"Isn't there anything you can do for him?" shouted the Doctor, who was bent over the Brielian's screaming body, buzzing him with his sonic screwdriver.

"No," answered the other Brielian through clenched teeth.

"But your people are some of the best healers in the universe!"

"For other species, yes. We are immune to our own medicines. It's too late. I will take him to the morgue, where he can die comfortably. It's best we can offer."

The Doctor growled. Then he stood up, pocketed his sonic screwdriver, and closed his eyes a moment. He opened them again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said to the injured Brellian on the floor.

"I… demand," choked out the hysterical alien, "that that man die for his murder." He pointed one long finger from his undamaged hand at me.

"I am in agreement," said the other Brielian, quietly. "The punishment for murder is a capital one."

Fear began to eat at me. "But I didn't mean to! I just meant to stop him releasing those… things. I… at worst, that's manslaughter!"

"No more murder," said the Doctor. "One death is bad enough, we don't need to add another to it."

"But-"

"No. He is out of your jurisdiction. I'll take care of him."

"Fine," said the Brielian, walking to his fellow. He bent down and gently reached into a particularly bulgy section of skin at the alien's side. He pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth, and handed it to the Doctor. "Here. Let's just get this over with."

The Doctor unwrapped it. The wormhole generator was a smooth black box just a little smaller than an IPad, which had a circle made of some sort of crystal embedded into one side, and a short metal knob attached to the other. "Okay," said the Doctor, looking at the Brielians. "I'll just power this up and send you lot home. Take care of yourselves."

"Just go," said the uninjured Brielian, bending to pick up his still yelling companion. "Thank you for your help."

"Right," said the Doctor, nodding. He turned to me. "Come along," he said quietly, and then walked out of the room.

I followed him. The fact that he was actually walking worried me more than anything else.

Staring out the open TARDIS doors, I saw blue sky all around, save for the large white cloud floating before us. Far, far, below, I could see the city of Jerusalem and the terrain of the surrounding earth. And right beside me, I watched the Doctor as he held the newly repowered wormhole generator in his hand. He'd hooked up the crystal to a wire in the TARDIS, muttering something about how he could "use the time vortex to jumpstart it," and then he'd buzzed his screwdriver at it, saying he was 'fine-tuning the instructions so it'll drop them off exactly where we want them to go," and now he too was staring out the doors, preparing to open a hole in space and time.

"Nasty way to travel, wormholes," he remarked. "I'd hate to have to deal with one that I couldn't control with a device like this. Hopefully I won't run into any more any time soon." He looked back at me. "You ready?"

I nodded.

"In that case… Geronimo!" He twisted the knob on the wormhole generator. Immediately, a dark beam burst out from the crystal, traveled through the TARDIS doors, and stopped just before the drifting cloud.

"I expected some sort of explosion," I commented, my eyebrows furrowed. "Where's the wormhole?"

"Oh, it's there," said the Doctor. "Watch."

I watched, and when, a few seconds later, the front of the cloud hit where the beam had ended, it disappeared. The whole sky around that area shimmered and rippled, and it only took a few more seconds before the wormhole entirely swallowed up the spaceship cloud.

Then the Doctor twisted the knob again, and a dark beam shot out from the sky and into the generator's crystal. "And that's that," he said, pocketing the device again. "Crisis averted. Millions of people saved."

I looked down at the tiny city of Jerusalem beneath us. "What about the nanites? They were still released."

"Er, yes," said the Doctor. "They'll continue as they've been programmed, spreading Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, and then, the world."

"Great," I muttered. "Well, I guess history remains intact, then. Jesus and his angels don't come back anytime soon, but much of the world lives perpetually believing they will." But then I remembered something. "Wait a minute, the apostle Paul also saw the resurrected Jesus. But the replica of Jesus was on the spaceship, right?"

"Well, yes," said the Doctor. "The nanites are smart. They knew their creators' plans, and once they figure out they aren't receiving new orders, they'll strategize for themselves how best to spread further. Paul probably came into physical contact with a lot of Christians, receiving a higher than usual concentration of the nanites, which might allow them to mess a bit with his senses of sight and sound, presenting a vision of Jesus to him."

"Then the same thing must have happened to John, with his vision of heaven." It was the strangest feeling, thinking of these men as victims to be pitied, rather than greats to be admired. "Ugh. Isn't there any way to stop the things?"

"No. Not unless we kill everyone who's infected, and I can tell you right now, that's not going to happen. They'll break down eventually, though. They'll probably lose all ability to grant visions in about a century or so, and will finally cease functioning after a few millennia."

_Lovely_, I thought. _And that means… _"So is there no way to extract the nanites from my own brain, then?"

"Well…" the Doctor said, drawing out the word, hesitating. "Humans won't invent anything that can detect the nanites, let alone remove them, for tens of thousands of years. But, if we go far enough forward…"

"Could we? Please? I want to know what it would be like to be me. The true me."

"You are you! The nanites don't change that. Besides, weren't you just talking about how wicked your heart is?"

"Yes, but I've begun to wonder to what extent the nanites have contaminated my perception of myself. As long as these nanites are in me, I'll always be second-guessing myself, wondering how they're influencing my thoughts and actions."

"Their influence is resistible. If you don't want them to affect you, they won't!"

"I could agree with you in theory now, but in my daily life to come, I'm sure I'll always wonder. Call it a lack of faith," I said bitterly.

The Doctor looked at me, scanning my eyes. "Okay," he said, finally. "But this is your last trip. I only promised you one, you know. And after what happened…"

I lowered my eyes. It was funny, when I saw the corpses before, I felt sick. Now that I'd killed someone myself, I just felt numb. "I understand. I don't want to go home anyways."

The Doctor took a step back. "What? No, I'll take you home. I didn't mean it that way."

"But I did." I raised my eyes to stare grimly back into his. "Listen, all my friends and family back home were Christians. I love them all, and I'll miss them all. Terribly. But I could never justify abandoning my religion to them. They'll think I'm crazy if I tell them, "The aliens did it!" And I couldn't lie to them about why I turned away, or try to live with them while hiding my unbelief from them. No, the me that was perished here in the first century. The me that is needs a fresh start. Everyone that knew me will think I died in whatever freak accident is used to explain the corpses at the rest stop. It kills me that they'll never know the truth. But I don't know how I could explain it to them. So please, drop me off in whatever time is capable of destroying… the Holy Spirit."

"It doesn't work that way. You'll never be a native to that time period! And I won't stay to help you get adjusted to all the developments. Trying for a second home in time doesn't end well. I know, I've seen it."

"I'm certain that's true, if you drop me in the middle of some society with a lot of history. But surely, surely sometime during the eons, there's a more isolated location, a place where anyone can come with their questions, and can learn anything. A school of sorts, perhaps? Maybe it could even have the technology to download information directly to my brain, so that it wouldn't take any time at all for me to get adjusted to a new time zone. Someplace that, unlike the world I've known, could be a true home for the truth-lover. The wisdom-lover. The philosopher. Someplace where, who knows, if I learn enough, maybe I'll find whatever it was I thought I'd found in God."

"I…" the Doctor hesitated. "I think I do know a place like that. It's not paradise," he cautioned quickly. "But it has such technology, in a community of minds similar to yours. It's… a church of sorts, actually. Composed of people who worship knowledge and truth. I think you'd like it."

I nodded. "It sounds like it. Could we get these nanites removed, and check it out?"

"I… yes. We can."

We looked at one another in silence, me still feeling numb, like all my emotions had been spent back in that outburst, or after I'd become responsible for the death of another being. I wondered if I'd ever feel really strongly again. Sure, I still felt some worry about what was in store for me, some anger at what had happened to me, etc. But they felt like the feelings of an insect, so tiny that my soul barely paid attention to them. I imagined my sensitivity would grow back in time, but I wasn't sure if I wanted it to anymore. I suspected that if it did, the pain would be unbearable.

And then, as I was looking at the Doctor, I began to wonder what his story was. For some reason, uncharacteristically enough, I'd just taken him for granted, like time travelers fell from the sky, ready-made. But his eyes now were old and full of pain. The very pain that I had just been worried about, myself. What sort of experiences had given him such eyes? Had his entire belief system crashed to the ground around him? Had he been responsible for the death of another? How could he go on, retaining his emotional sensitivity, feeling every bit of the agony? I thought, staring into those eyes, I thought for quite possibly the very first time in my life, that I really did not want to know.

So I asked a different question instead, as the Doctor pulled away his gaze and started grabbing controls on the TARDIS. "You know, there's still one thing about this all that I don't understand. Where did Satan come from? I mean, there's mention of him in the Old Testament, but he also tempts Jesus in the gospels, for instance. Did that actually happen?"

"I, uh, doubt it," said the Doctor. "But he's real. Sort of. I… met him once. Long story."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. And then he pulled a switch, and we traveled through time.


	8. Epilogue: Angels Fear to Tread

**Epilogue: Angels Fear to Tread**

I carefully watched my every step on the barren earth. One foot, then the next, watching for rocks, watching for thorns. I was miles away from any humans by this point, but I didn't dare turn my electric skin-splicer off. Not only would that shining light would keep me safely hidden under this desert sun, but it would drive away any vicious Earth animals. If I was vigilant, constantly vigilant, I felt certain I could survive here. Still, I didn't just want to survive. I wanted to live happily, freely, safely. I cursed the names of my companions, who had, for reasons unfathomable to me, departed from this world while I was on its surface. But I couldn't blame them too much, for how could they have known that I'd snuck a teleport down to the planet, simply for the thrill of it? It was stupid of me. Still, I cursed them, but even as I did, I knew that their plan had been a good one. If I could do something similar, perhaps all hope was not yet lost. I knew how to make a birthing garden, and I carried seeds within me as did every Brielian. It'd be unconventional, but if I could ensure the humans wouldn't threaten us, I could raise a new family here on this planet and live happily with them.

As I walked, I strategized. It wouldn't take longer than a few centuries before small collections of the nanites had spread to nearly every human being, even though they were ineffectual on those who didn't believe in Christ. I knew that despite all the work that had gone into that plan, unless I had access to a replica of Jesus, which I didn't, the Christians would never accept me. I needed to try again. And again. However many times it took before it worked. I had a long lifespan, I could be patient. I could reprogram some of the nanites, make them serve the spreading of a different religion. I could appear to select individuals, pretend to share great revelations with them. Maybe write some down on golden plates. And when the whole world followed religions under my control, I could appear to them as an archangel, and be sure that they would not harm me or my progeny.

I walked across the barren earth a little faster.

. . .

_(Just to be clear, I, the author, am not remotely anti-religion. I am a Christian; I believe that a person must accept Jesus as the son of God and as their lord and savior to be saved from their sin. I scrutinize that belief heavily, and if you wish to PM me, I'll be happy to talk to you about why I believe that is the truth in the actual world. But in the Doctor's world, it's not true, and this story was born out of the attempt to understand how religion might work in the Doctor's world, and how I might react to discovering I was wrong about religion. I really enjoyed writing this story, and I hope you enjoyed reading it__)._


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